Daily Mail analyzes Bond tax info

The This Is Money website, part of the Daily Mail network of sites, has published an analysis of the tax side of James Bond films.

Eon Productions has “received more than £100million in tax subsidies in the UK but pay little corporation tax,” according to the story. That figure amounts to $129 million.

The story is based on information from a group called Tax Watch UK.

Here’s an excerpt. Danjaq is the parent company of U.K.-based Eon Productions.

Tax Watch alleges that Danjaq, which ultimately owns the Bond franchise and is based in Delaware and California, as well as its Hollywood partners reap the benefit of cinema ticket sales. 

To be honest, most Bond fans don’t care about such details. They just want to see a movie.

Nevertheless, tax breaks offered by different countries affect the locations used by Bond films.

With SPECTRE, for example, the Mexican government offered various tax breaks if the country were depicted in a favorable light. With the hack of SPECTRE-related memos and such, memos saw the light of day showing there was a concern from studio executives that such tax breaks be maximized.

Here’s another excerpt:

Eon Productions received £30million in tax credits in the year Spectre was made. But that was sunk into losses almost exactly equal to that amount, which meant the company only just broke even. Accounts for an Eon subsidiary, which are understood to be linked to the next in the franchise, No Time To Die, indicate the makers received another £47million last year. 

UPDATE: Danjaq LLC’s home address is in Santa Monica, California, according to Dun & Bradstreet.

@007inLA on Twitter says this is an old address and it’s now in west Los Angeles. It turns out he’s right. The new address is on part of Eon’s website.

A lot of sites still carry the Santa Monica address, including Danjaq’s own LinkedIn page. The point is Danjaq is U.S.-based. I heard from a Doubting Thomas on Facebook who seemed to think Danjaq was still a Swiss company.

At one time, Danjaq was a Swiss corporation and known as Danjaq S.A. It was still known by that name in 1989 when Licence to Kill was released. It had become Danjaq Inc. by 1995 when GoldenEye came out. It has been known as Danjaq LLC since at least 1997 when Tomorrow Never Dies was released. You can see the evolution of the name in the copyright notices of those movies.